Once, when I was about 4, and I went to the bottom of my Aunt's swimming pool during swimming lessons and didn't come back up. The instructor dove in (after removing his watch, which made my mother furious) and pulled me out. I was blue and had to be resuscitated.

The second, I was 14, with my cousin driving around (he was 16) when he decided to have fun with the emergency brake. We went off the road at 35 mph and hit a tree head-on. I was not wearing a seatbelt. My knee hit the dashboard, dislocating my hip and cracking my pelvis, but I was thrown upward, rather than outward — where I would have most likely broken my neck by hitting the crumpled up hood. I don't recall a thing about the accident — I woke up on the ground (my cousin pulled me from the car) with an off-duty paramedic in a horrible Hawaiian shirt looking over me. I don't even recall any pain associated with the accident.

My husband, many years ago before we knew each other, almost died. To be more exact he actually did die from a bleeding ulcer for a brief time. He says that it was a peaceful feeling. Warm and peaceful.

He doesn't have any actual details or experience that he can remember, but said, ever after that he was not afraid to die. He doesn't want to die and doesn't want to suffer.....who does?

Bleeding to death, the way he did, is a peaceful and painless process. The idea of death was no longer frightening.